My Man Don't Love Me

Billie "Lady Day" Holiday
photo by Milt Hinton

Good Morning Blues#2: With Chet in the Mornings

I began this rather cold morning with a butter sandwich, Chet Baker Quartet, a cup of tea, and an inescapable mournful empathy for pianist Dick Twardzik. Before begining the day's task, which is writing a 1800-word piece on cities and movies for 24 Monthly, I ran into this very atmospheric Köln concert of Chet Baker Quartet. Butter and tea were finished after the first tune, and I left alone with Chet's interpretation of Imagination.

The Köln gig was a part of 1955 European tour of the newly formed Chet Baker Quartet. Chet's recording career had started just three years before and now he was a big name in jazz. Musically, he became widely known thanks to the discs he had made with baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan as part of a provocative and unusual pianoless quartet (trumpet, baritone sax, bass and drums). Half an hour later, I went for a second cup of tea and found this interview with Chet, from Jazz Podium magazine, 1978. Interviewer is Gudrun Endress:


When did all of these troubles start, in the '60s or in the '50s?

• No, in 1957. I was 27 years old. And all the musicians that I thought were the greatest musicians were into that, you know. And I never messed with it for a long lime. All the time I was with Gerry Mulligan, I was clean, but people thought I was doing something.

I always thought it happened alter the death of Dick Twardzik.

• It did. That's when it happened, in 1957, when I went back to New York after he died. That 's when I started it and I kept that pretty strong for about 13 years and then a judge in Califonia was very kind to me. He could have given me five years like poor Art Pepper, who got sent twice to San Quentin or some crazy place like that, but the judge sent me to a sort of guidance-center where they test you, psychological and every way possible, to decide what to do with you. And when I went back to court with the results of the testing, he let me go. He put me back on the street again.

Is that the only way that you can cure yourself?

• That's the only way. And I did. I got on the methadone program. I was on it 7 years. I started out at 8 milligrams, and little by little I had to take the dosage down and down until I came to Europe with just enough for two months and I made it last for four and a half months. And I just tapered out to nothing and stopped.

That means you are thinking a lot about why you use this. Is it because you can't bear the environment around you, all the bullshit?

• Yes, the people I had to deal with were a drag, the stuff that I got was never any good. You know, you put all of that energy into the wrong direction. So I decided almost too late to cut it loose. Just to see if I could make it again after everything. Kind of a challenge in a way, because after so much bad publicity it's hard to get people to believe you.

But the bad publicity is publicity, don't forget that.

• Yes, I know, but everybody reads that and you'd be surprised how many people believe it - what they read. Not people like you, people with some sophistication.

But all these people who are judges or judge these persons, they are maybe drinking a lot of schnapps or beer everyday and they don' t think about that.

• Oh, but that 's all right. Drugs are something out of the norm, that is really to be feared, I guess. And there are a lot of people, friends of mine, that didn't make it, who couldn't handle it and it killed them. So it comes to a point where you really have to say, do you want to live or do you want to die and then you make that choice and that's it.

And what's the reason why you want to live, to play music?

• That's about the only thing I'm good for, I guess.

***

Chet looking at Dick Twardzik

But who was Dick Twardzik? Born in Danvers, Boston, on April 3D, 1931, the gifted Twardzik studied classical music before discovering jazz. He began playing clubs in 1946 and by 1954 he was clearly one of the most promising young musicians in Boston. In 1955, when pianist Russ Freeman decided not to travel to Europe with Chet's quartet, the trumpeter found in Dick Twardzik a natural choice. But just like Chet and Littman, Dick was addicted to heroin. Freeman remembered many years later: "Chet was addicted , his drummer was addicted, and there is always a division between musicians who are clean and those who are using. Addicts hang with other addicts."

Chet and Dick's musical relationship would be one of the most interesting albeit tragic experiences in the history of jazz. Beginning the tour in Holland in September 1955, the Chet Baker Quartet played many concerts in Europe and on October 9 they performed at the Köln Börsensaal , in Germany. That tour was his first and his last, because he died from a heroin overdose in his Paris hotel room on October 2 1, 1955. He was only 24 years old.

Now let's go back to another cold day, 55 years ago, in October 9, 1955, only twelve days before Dick Twardzik's death. The setting is Köln Börsensaal. I have it on a CD called The Lost 1955 Concert (RLP Records 88618). The tune is Imagination, with Chet Baker (trumpet), Dick Twardzik (piano), Jimmy Bond (bass), Peter Littman (drums).

Classics 1217: Duke Ellington 1950

Classics 1217
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra
1950
Release Date: 2002


Other notable musicians in this CD: Wild Bill Davis, Billy Strayhorn, Mercer Ellington and other usual Ellington gang members.
Label(s): Mercer, Columbia
Number of sessions: 6
Unissued materials: None
Track Highlights: a 12 minutes The Tattooed Bride, a 15 minutes Mood Indigo


About the period: Undeniably the early fifties were difficult years for Duke Ellington. Despite having a contract with Columbia the band was rather infrequently recorded. In addition, the peaks of Ellington's creativity have always paralleled the degree of public acceptance of his compositions and general appreciation of his band. Never since the early twenties. had the wider public cared less for big bands than around 1950. In spite of his economical problems Ellington continued to record music of very high quality.

The Album: Opens with ten tracks for Mercer. Eight of these suffered a strange fate, Originally conceived as 78 singles, they were made at a time when the industry was gradually switching to LPs and were thus issued on a very obscure 10-inch LP, which had limited distribution as Mercer left business soon after. This music was next re-issued in 1964 on Riverside just before this label also stopped issuing records. This same LP was finally again on the market in the mid-eighties - when CDs came along. No wonder these outstanding piano-duo shave attained near mythical reputation. Two additional tracks were issued under Wild Bill Davis' name with the Duke sitting in on Things Ain't What They Used To Be. The three next performances for Columbia are not very well known either. Love You Madly features a vocal by Yvonne Lanauze and a fine tenor solo by Paul Gonsalves.

Paul Gonsalves

November 1950 session must be one of the first (if not the first) Gonsalves appearance with Duke on record. Ellington, who had been having trouble with the tenor saxophone chair, finally stabilized it for the next two decades with the addition of Gonsalves. He easily filled the gap that followed Webster’s departure. Gonsalves had a breathy, rich tone that identified him as a Coleman Hawkins disciple, and had put in tours of duty with Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie. “When he came in the band, he knew every Webster solo by heart,” later said Harry Carney. Gonsalves himself once stated, “If I die tomorrow, I’ll consider I’ve been successful, because when I began to study it was with the idea of being with that band.”

Flamingo, Ellington& Strayhorn on piano, Wendell Marshall on bass, N. Y. C., October 3, 1950.

Other Major Replacements

Gonsalves was one of so many replacement in Ellington's orchestra, from 1949 to 1950. The course of the orchestra during this period is hard to plot, the changes within the band being so numerous. The situation can be summarized briefly: Fred Guy left and was not replaced, Ellington having subsequently kept his rhythm section down to three pieces. Ben Webster left and Paul Gonsalves came. The trumpets wavered between four and five pieces, sometimes
the band having to carry two lead men owing to Al Killian's lip trouble. Quentin Jackson came to the trombone section in place of Claude Jones, but Tyree Glenn ceased to be a regular member of the band. For the European tour of 1950 (with the full band this time, but omitting England from the itinerary owing to the union ban) Ellington was without Tyree Glenn and he brought two drummers with him, Greer and Butch Ballard. The tenor sax chair was vacant so he signed up ex-Basie tenor man Don Byas, who was resident in Europe, for the duration of the tour. Oscar Pettiford had left and been replaced by Wendell Marshall, cousin of the late Jimmy Blanton into whose old chair he now moved. This was a bad period for big bands and both
Count Basie and Woody Herman, Duke's keenest rivals since the mid-forties, had been forced to disband their groups. In February, 1950, he was presented with an award from the magazine Downbeat, in addition to which he was presented with a parchment scroll commemorating the fact that Ms was the only leading band from the magazine's 1949 poll still in existence!

Sessions:

• BILLY STRAYHORN TRIO:

Duke Ellington (p), Billy Strayhorn (p), Wendell Marshall (b).
New York, October 3, 1950.

Cotton Tail 5710
C Jam Blues 5711
Flamingo 5712
Bang-Up Blues 5713

• WILD BILL DAVIS AND HIS REAL GONE ORGAN:

Duke Ellington (p), Wild Bill Davis (org),Johnny Collins (g), Jo Jones (d).
New York, late October, 1950.

Things Ain't What They Used To Be M-4023

• WILD BILL DAVIS AND HIS REAL GONE ORGAN:

Wild Bill Davis (org),Johnny Collins (g), Jo Jones (d).
New York, late October, 1950.

Make No Mistake M-4024

• BILLY STRAYHORN TRIO:

Duke Ellington(p), Billy Strayhorn (p), Joe Shulman (b).
New York, November 1950.

Tonk M-2479
Johnny Come lately M-2480
In A Blue Summer Garden M-2481
Great Times M-2482

• DUKE ELLINGTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA:

trumpet section: Harold Baker, Nelson Williams, Cat Anderson, Andres Merenguito and Ray
Nance (also Vln)
Trombone: Lawrence Brown, Quentin Jackson.
Jimmy Hamilton (cl,ts), Johnny Hodges (as), Russell Procope (cl, as), Paul Gonsalves (ts), Harry Carney (cl, barsax), Duke Ellington (p), Wendell Marshall (b), Sonny Greer (d), AI Hibbler (voc), Yvonne Lanauze (voc).
New York, November 20, 1950.

Build That Railroad CO-44662-1
Love You Madly CO-44663-1
Great Times CO-44664-1

• DUKE ELLINGTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA:

Mercer Ellington (flugel horn),Tyree Glenn (tb), Billy Strayhorn (p).
New York, December 18, 1950.

The Tattooed Bride CO-44749-1
Mood Indigo CO-44750-1



Total Time: 66 mins. (approximately)

Soul Food (Bobby Timmons, 1966)

Bobby Timmons is one of my favorite gospelly jazz pianists. A master of rhythmic innovations and superb interpreter of standards, especially in live dates. As far as the funky piano style is concerned, among all pianists from Horace Silver and Junior Mance to Les McCann, Timmons is is the one that I really have the utmost groove with.He was Art Blakey's Jazz Messenger's pianist and the one who wrote Moanin', a Blakey anthem tune for many years and one of the most played items in the whole history of jazz.

Here, Soul Food is a rare Prestige recording in trio format from 1966, which is usually paired with another LP, Soul Man! in reissues. It is not a great example of Timmon's artistry or his harmonic sophistication - in that case I recommend This Here Is Bobby Timmons, 1960, or In Person, 1961, both from Prestige catalog - but it's a good demonstration of his sheer energy when he really wants to groove.

He is accompanied with Lee Otis on bass and Billy Higgins on drums. First four tracks (Giblets, Turkey Wings, Angel Eyes, Cracklin' Bread) are from a September 30 date and others (Stolen Sweets, Make Someone Happy, Sauce Meat) from October 14, 1966. Now eat your Soul Food!

.

Dylan: Witmark Demos 1962-64

Two falls have been passed since the release of Bob Dylan's last Bootleg Series(Volume Eight). Now, bootlegs are back with the 47-track Vol. 9, which will feature studio recordings from 1962-64 known to old bootleggers as the Witmark Demos and Leeds Demos, named after the New York studios where Dylan recorded. Dylan will also reissue his first eight albums (from his 1962 self-titled debut through 1967's John Wesley Harding) in mono format, which have never been issued on CD before. The reissues — reportedly mastered using "first issue copies of the mono LPs" in order to recreate the sound of the original LPs.

The Witmark Demos features 47 Bob Dylan songs recorded by the artist accompanied only by his acoustic guitar, harmonica and occasionally piano on 2 CD or 4 LP 180-gram vinyl. All of these songs were written—and their subsequent demos recorded—before Bob Dylan turned 24 years old. 

Among the many gems are 15 Bob Dylan songs that were recorded by the artist only for these sessions, and which have never been officially released to the public until now. These include the plaintive Ballad For A Friend, the civil rights era-inspired Long Ago, Far Away and The Death Of Emmett Till, and the poignant Guess I'm Doing Fine.

For those who have been busy with hunting Dylan's real bootlegs, many of materials in these CDs are familiar, but certainly not with this clean sound and perfect quality.

Leeds Music Demos/New York City, New York /February 1962

1. Hard Times In New York Town
2. Poor Boy Blues
3. Ballad For A Friend
4. Rambling, Gambling Willie
5. Man On The Street
6. Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues
7. Standing On The Highway

Witmark & Sons Demos/ New York City, New York /December 1962

1. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
2. Tomorrow Is A Long Time
3.The Death Of Emmett Till
4.Let Me Die In My Footsteps
5. Ballad Of Hollis Brown
6.Quit Your Low Down Ways
7.Baby, I'm In The Mood For You

Witmark Studio/ New York City, New York /Winter 1963

1. Bound To Lose, Bound To Win
2. All Over You
3. I'd Hate To Be You On That Dreadful Day
4. Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues

Witmark Studio/ New York City, New York/ March 1963

1. Long Time Gone
2. Masters Of War
3. Farewell
4. Oxford Town
5. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
6. Walkin' Down The Line

Witmark Studio /New York City, New York/ April 1963

1. I Shall Be Free
2.Bob Dylan's Blues
3.Bob Dylan's Dream
4. Boots Of Spanish Leather

Witmark Studio /New York City, New York/ May 1963

1. Girl From The North Country
2.Seven Curses
3.Hero Blues

Witmark Studio/ New York City, New York /August 1963

1. Whatcha Gonna Do
2. Gypsy Lou
3. Ain't Gonna Grieve
4.John Brown
5.Only A Hobo
6.When The Ship Comes In

Witmark Studio /New York City, New York /October 1963

1. The Times They Are A-Changin'

Witmark Studio /New York City, New York /December 1963

1. Paths Of Victory

Witmark Studio/ New York City, New York /January 1964

1. Guess I'm Doing Fine
2.Baby Let Me Follow You Down (Eric von Schmidt)

Unidentified Recording Studio/ New York City, New York /Mid to late June 1964

1. Mr. Tambourine Man
2.Mama, You Been On My Mind
3. I'll Keep It With Mine

.

Ben Webster: Stomping Love

Nat Hentoff Original Liner Notes: Ben Webster's Soulville,1957

Johnny Griffin, one of the more venturesome of the "modern" tenors, was talking recently with Don Gold of Down Beat concerning those nonpareil jazz players who never become dated. On his list were Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster. “Ben is phenomenal. These guys can come and play with the young cats and still fit in. These guys — like Hawk and Ben - are living legends.”

Otchi-Tchor-Ni-Ya

A friend was driving me home, usual for a fellow like me who is afraid to drive himself, in a country that monkey driving is a habit. A CD was playing in his obsessively cleaned Peugeot. It was a ragbag of oldies, most of them boring covers of originally boring songs. Rubbish was playing one after another as a sonic foreground for a gray landscape of a decaying city, where I used to live. Suddenly somewhere between a third rate hippie ballad and an Roy Orbison cover of mini-skirt nostalgia something happened. Something that first froze me for a second, then thrilled me for 5 minutes and finally when I repeated that five minutes for more than 6 times I knew that a key song has been added to my uncalled changes of life: Otchi-Tchor-Ni-Ya by Louis Armstrong!

Wait! Don't say that it's a an ordinary Armstrong CD-filler or a common stuff because of its public domain status to be included in European oldies compilations. Probably even a great Armstrong biographer like James Lincoln Collier felt the same way, since there is no trace of this song in his 400-page book on Satchmo. But despite all these preconceptions and misconceptions about latter days of Armstrong (which myself as a 'purist' had the same problem for a long time), it's an absolute musical miracle, a perfect masterpiece that summarize half of a century of jazz in five and a half minutes.

Otchi-Tchor-Ni-Ya means Dark Eyes. It's a Russian song. The lyrics of the song were written by a Ukrainian poet and writer Yevhen Hrebinka, in 1843. Armstrong's version sounded like "Oh Cha Chunya". and the words are quite different from the proper translation of the song from Russian to English. But words doesn't matter because Satchmo has turned it to a jam song. A chronology of things that would happen to you is as follow:

00:01 Billy Kyle's first piano line can pierce any stone, just with that very first note.

00:07 Armstrong comes in - Gabriel plays the horn!

00:10 Clarinet of Barney Bigard, like a beautiful butterfly chasing after another one (here, Satchmo's trumpet).

00:30 There is a indescribable urgency in this music. Saying all the things, all necessary things, all the things that should be said for the last time.

01:13 Satchmo sings. Words are utterly unimportant. It's just jiving.

01:45 Kyle returns. He sound like father of Bud Powell in a slower tempo. Space! Space!

02:14 Band takes off. New Orleans appears before our eyes. It's a manifestation of humanity.

02:38 Clarinet solo. Unbelievable.

02:55 Bud Freeman from Chicago plays his warm tenor sound on saxophone. So goddamn lyrical!

03:14 A suspending moment with Arvell's Shaw bass before...

03:27 ...before Trummy Young's trombone roars with a freedom unheard in the history of the instrument. His first attack is maddening!

03:44 The Socrates of jazz returns with his endless drama of sound and vision.

04:16 Kenny John takes a solo on his drums. Lifting up - lifting up.

04:48 Swing. Extacy. Joy. Cry. This damn thing will never stop.

05:25 Five seconds of silence begins. It's like 5 minutes.

The song is recorded in New York City, March 19, 1954 by Decca Records. Matrix number is 86062. LP number DL5532. Dig yourself:

Bashir, thanks for driving me home, and thanks for Otchi-Tchor-Ni-Ya.

A Fuller Affair: Diggin' Curtis Fuller Trombone

In August 1959 Ralph Gleason wrote to Ira Giltler that how he was impressed by 25-year-old trombonist Curtis Fuller: "Benny Golson was here in San Fransisco and the group was a gas. Fuller had the hardest trombone job in the world. He followed J. J. Johnson (I assume the Johnson quintet had just left SF) but he made it and knocked me out." Only two years before this "knocking-out" Fuller made his mark on one of the most memorable intros in modern jazz, the opening bars of John Coltrane's Blue Train.

Detroit-born Fuller "owes much to Kai Winding's modernization of trombone technique and to J. J. Johnson's demonstration of the instrument's solo potential. However, it was the harmonic language of John Coltrane and Miles Davis that marked him most profoundly," writes Brian Cook about the master of modern trombone.

William Gottlieb's Jazz Photos, Part 8: Dizzy

History of Jazz: Third Stream

تاريخ موسيقي جاز

بخش هفتم – تِرد استريم

در 1961 گونتر شولر موسيقي Third Stream را موسيقي ناميد كه جايي در ميانۀ موسيقي جاز و موسيقي كلاسيك قرار گرفته است. او بيست بعد از اين تاريخ، در حالي‌كه هنوز تكليف موسيقي‌دانان و مورخان چندان با آن روشن نبود، فهرستي را طرح كرد از چيزهايي كه « Third Streamنيست» در واقع هدف او زدودن تصورات اشتباه از ماهيت اين موسيقي در ذهن شنوندگان بود:

الف – اين موسيقي جاز با سازهاي زهي نيست!

ب – اين موسيقي جازي نيست كه با سازهاي مخصوص موسيقي كلاسيك زده شود!

ج – اين موسيقي كلاسيكي نيست كه جازيست‌ها آن را بنوازند!

د – قضيه اين نيست كه عده‌اي كمي راول و شوئنبرگ قاطي آكوردهاي عجيب بي‌باپ بكنند يا برعكس!

ر – جاز در فرم يك «فوگ» نيست!

***

در طول بيشتر سال‌هاي دهه پنجاه ميلادي معدودي از آهنگسازان موسيقي جاز شروع به آميختن تكنيك‌هاي موسيقي كلاسيك غربي با موسيقي جاز نمودند گر چه در موسيقي «كول» قبلاً اتفاق‌هاي مشابهي افتاده بود كه نمونه آن ‌را در كارهاي دِيو بروبِك، نوازنده پيانو، مي‌توان مشاهده كرد. البته در اوايل قرن آهنگسازان ديگري مانند جورج گرشوين در rhapsody in blue و داروس ميلو در the creation of the word نيز اين تلفيق موسيقي جاز را با موسيقي كلاسيك تجربه كرده بودند.

در دهه‌هاي 1920 و 1930 نيز اصطلاح «جاز سمفونيك» بر سر زبان‌ها افتاد. دوك الينگون در سال 1935 آغاز به تصنيف آثار متعدد خود از جمله reminiscing , diminuendo in blue , crescendo in blue كرد كه همه آثاري اركسترال محسوب مي‌شوند. آهنگساز كلاسيك ايگور استراوينسكي نيز كنسرتوئي به‌نام Ebony concerto براي وودي هرمان نوازنده كلارينت تصنيف كرد. 

به crescendo in blue الينگتون، 1937، گوش كنيد:

نمونه‌هاي ديگري از كاوش‌ها تلفيق موسيقي كلاسيك و جاز را مي‌توان در اواخر دهه 1940 در آلبوم birth of cool مايلز ديويس ملاحظه كرد و هم‌چنين در صفحات كلود تورن‌هيل كه به‌وسيلۀ گيل اونز تنظيم شده بود.

در سال 1955 جان لوييس، پيانيست و آهنگساز بزرگ‌وار گروه «مدرن جز كوارتت»، تشكيلاتي را سازمان دادند كه «انجمن موسيقي جاز و كلاسيك» نام گرفت و آن‌ها توانستند موسيقي‌هائي را به اجرا درآورند كه تا آن‌زمان تقريباً هرگز شنيده نشده بود. آهنگسازان جاز و كلاسيك دور هم گرد آمدند و از هم آموختند و آثاري به اين ترتيب ساخته، اجرا و ضبط شد؛ از هنرمنداني مانند چارلز مينگوس، جورج راسل، جي جي جانسون و گونتر شولر.

رويكردهاي ديگري به سبك Third Stream به‌وسيله افرادي مانند بيل اونز رخ داد كه اركستر سازهاي زهي و استفاده از آثار كلاسيك باخ، فوره و شوپن را جزو آثار اجرايي‌شان در چارچوب بداهه‌نوازي‌هاي جاز قرار دادند. همين‌طور استن گِتز در صفحه معروف خود به‌نامِFOCUS بداهه نوازي‌هاي خود را با اركستري كه به وسيله ادي ساوتر تنظيم شده بود اجرا كرد.

به قطعه «پن» از آلبوم «فوكوس» استن گتز گوش كنيد:

بعضي «پيوريست‌ها» از اين تلفيق‌ها ناراضي‌اند و معتقند اين كار باعث از دست رفتن جوهره اصلي موسيقي جاز، بداهه‌نوازي، مي‌شود. اما هيچ‌كس نمي‌تواند منكر شود كه مجموعه‌اي درخشان از اين سبك، در صفحه‌هايي از دهه 1950 و اوايل دهه 1960 به يادگار مانده كه هيچ جازدوستي نمي‌تواند خود را از شنيدن آن‌ها محروم كند.